Social services chiefs in Gloucester have released a statement outlining how they protect children from abuse.

It said: "We would carry out an assessment by visiting the child and talking to him/her and the parents then look at ways of working with the family to minimise the risk if at all possible.

This would be by things like parenting courses, anger management or even removing the parent who was causing the problems.

"If we are unable to remove the risk and we feel the risk is serious enough, we could remove a child from home. This would be where we consider a child would be at significant risk of harm if they stayed at home and we have to demonstrate this to the courts.

"These procedures are about abuse within the home. Often if a child is at risk from influences outside the home, such as drink, drugs or prostitution, it makes no difference if the child is living at home or is in a foster home or children's home.

"Often in these cases the parents want to work with us to stop these things happening, so there would be no benefit for the child or the parent in removing them from home."

Specifically about Michael Brooks, Alan Barton, social services operations manager, children's resource, who was manager of Parklands at the time of Brooks' abduction, said: "Having gone through the trauma of Michael's abduction in 1995 I feel the situation he is in now is very sad and quite tragic.

"If there were similar attempts to abduct a young person from care today, we would do everything we could to safeguard him or her as we did in 1995. We must remember there were never any complaints of abuse from Michael."